This festival is being held in Istanbul by the participation of the world's famous sculptors. They rebuilt the 3000 years of Istanbul history with their imagination and created a tale atmosphere. It is open for visit until the end of September in the area of Carrefour / Kozyatagi.

Louis Daugerre is considered by many to be the inventor of modern photography. On August 19, 1839, Daugerre announced his invention of the daguerreotype process that fixed optical images permanently. But the first successful photographic image, called a heliograph, was captured more than a decade earlier.

Historians credit fellow Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce with being the first to permanently capture an optical image. Niépce worked with traditional lithography techniques, but was not an artist himself. So he relied on his talented son to create images for the lithographs. When his son was drafted in 1814 to fight with Napoleon at Waterloo, Niepce was left without an illustrator.

Niépce turned his attention to a process called photochemical drawing, using silver salts, and for the next decade he struggled to perfect a primitive form of photo-lithography. Niépce's biggest breakthrough came in 1822, when he created a permanent image by exposing coated pewter plates to a camera image, using the vapors from heated iodine crystals to darken the silver.

Portrait of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1795, by C. Laguiche.

The exposure time for the first photo lasted eight hours -- so the sun had time to move from east to west, appearing to shine on both sides of the building.

The iodine method would inspire Daugerre's more successful mercury vapor development process -- and in fact, Niépce teamed up with Daugerre in 1829 and died four years later at age 69.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.View from the Window at Le Gras.ca1826.Heliograph, in original frame.25.8 x 29.0 cm.

The First Photograph, housed in its original presentational frame and sealed within an atmosphere of inert gas in an airtight steel and plexiglas storage frame, must be viewed under controlled lighting in order for its image to be visible. In general, this procedure also requires viewing within a darkened environment free of other incidental light sources. This effect, suggestive of Gernsheim's fIrst viewing of the mirror-like effect of the pewter plate, attempts to give each viewer the chance to experience the effect of discovery from which the image can be seen to seemingly emerge from the original heliograph plate.

After Lovecraft died in 1937, at age 46, local fans purchased a tombstone for him in Providence's Swan Point Cemetery. The tombstone reads, "I am Providence." The saying comes from a letter that Lovecraft wrote to James F. Morton in May of 1926. In it Lovecraft quoted Satan from The Life of St. Anthony by St. Athanasius, a Christian text:

"Once a demon exceeding high appeared with pomp, and dared to say, 'I am the power of God and I am Providence, what dost thou wish that I shall give thee?'"

Is the problem of trying to collect and measure gas emissions from livestock (or maybe your in-laws) keeping you awake at nights? Have you ever wondered exactly how much energy cow burps emit? Now your curiosity can be satisfied with the 1993 patent of the 'System for Measuring Metabolic Gas Emissions From Animals"! Designed to measure how much energy free-roaming livestock actually use, this device will help identify the feeding systems which allow the most efficient use of energy for the health of the cow.

But wait! The device is fun and easy to use! First feed the subject the tube which acts as an internal tracer. Attach the end of the tracer tube to the inflatable collar placed around the animals neck. With every breath, metabolic gas samples are collected and analyzed. Hey, who said bovine belches aren't fun? Click here to check out the latest science info on Cow Gas!

Disappearing Dot

This is bizarre... there is a blind spot right near your centre of vision. If you don’t believe me, try this experiment.

1.Draw a black dot on a piece of paper. Write the numbers 1 to 7 to the right of the dot.

Make the dot about 1cm in diameter. Space the dot and the numbers about 1.5 cm apart.

2.Hold the piece of paper about 20 cm from your nose. Close your right eye. Now look at each number in turn but pay attention to the dot.

The dot will ‘disappear’ when you’re looking somewhere between 2 and 5. The next step is even more amazing!

3.Draw a red line though the dot and numbers. Repeat step 2 to make the dot disappear again.

Amazingly, the line appears unbroken when the dot disappears!

4.Diagram of a Human Eye

Here’s a simplified picture of your eye to help understand what’s going on.

5.Photograph of a Human Retina

This is a photo of a human retina (mine in fact). You can see the optic nerve and blood supply entering through the bright area. This area is called the optic disk. The slightly darker patch to the right of the optic disk is called the fovea.

Note: this photo was taken by an optometrist using a special camera.

what's going on?

The back of your eye is called the retina. It's covered in millions of special cells called photoreceptors. Photoreceptors convert light energy to tiny electrical signals, which are then sent to your brain along tiny nerves.

All the nerves inside your eye are neatly bundled together into one big cable called the optic nerve. The optic nerve exits the eye along with the retina's blood supply through the optic disk. The optic disk is the bright area in the photo of the retina above. You can also see the blood supply (arteries) entering through the optic disk.

Because the optic nerve itself is not sensitive to light, the optic disk is a blind spot. The black dot you drew 'disappears' when it is focussed onto the optic disk.

Now the optic disk is very close to another important part of your retina called the fovea. The fovea is the dark patch just to the left of the optic disk in the photo. When you look directly at an object, its image is focused onto your fovea. This area has more photoreceptors than any other part of your retina and is where you see sharp detail.

Being this close to your fovea, you might be wondering why we don't usually notice this blind spot? It's easy to assume the brain uses the right eye's view to fill in the left eye's blind spot and vice versa.

But even with one eye close, you still don't notice your blind spot! Remember what happened to the line you drew through the dot? Somehow, your brain looks at what it sees around the blind spot and then amazingly fills in the blanks so everything looks normal.

That's a good thing too... just imagine how annoying a big dark spot in your field of vision would be. It's also a great reminder that our sense of vision is a partnership between the eyes and the brain. So make sure you look after both!

To find the blind spot in your right eye, turn the paper upside down so the dot is to the right of the numbers. Also try holding the paper a bit further away from your eyes... can you explain why you now have to look at a different number to make the dot disappear?

Sea Dragons are arguably the most spectacular and mysterious of all ocean fish. Though close relatives of sea horses, sea dragons have larger bodies and leaf-like appendages which enable them to hide among floating seaweed or kelp beds.

Leafy Sea Dragons are very interesting to watch-- the leafy appendages are not used for movement. The body of a sea dragon scarcely appears to move at all. Steering and turning is through movement of tiny, translucent fins along the sides of the head (pectoral fins, visible above) and propulsion derives from the dorsal fins (along the spine). Their movement is as though an invisible hand were helping, causing them to glide and tumble in peculiar but graceful patterns in slow-motion. This movement appears to mimic the swaying movements of the seaweed and kelp. Only close observation reveals movement of an eye or tiny fins.

Hey, it has a funny, naughty look.

They are found in the ocean waters of southern Western Australia, South Australia and further east along the coastline of Victoria province, Australia. Sea dragons are protected under Australian law, and their export is strictly regulated. A 1996 assessment by the Australian government's Department of Environmental Heritage indicates "It [the Leafy Sea Dragon] is now completely protected in South Australia because demand for aquarium specimens threatened the species with extinction."

1958 edition of Science Digest featured an interesting article on Soviet plans to build cities on the moon. Of course the Soviets never sent men to the moon, and it would be another 11 years before Neil Armstrong would make his historic landing. Back in 1958, however, it seemed that Soviet plans to colonize the moon were taken rather seriously by American scientists. The article is very interesting and gives some historic perspective on the space race between the US and USSR.

by Albert Parry

We advertise our failures, but the Soviets don’t. For all we know, Moscow’s scientists and engineers did try to shoot a rocket to the moon last November 7, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Communist seizure of power in Russia, but failed.

You will recall that for a while, during that weekend, some mysterious radio signals were heard from outer space. They were not accountable by the two Sputniks, and soon they faded out.

We may surmise that, in their try for the moon, the Soviet shooting team took a wrong aim, and that the rocket they fired is now either orbiting around the sun or is lost in space.

But whether or not there indeed was such an attempt, the Soviets are certain to try sending a rocket to the moon, and soon, too. The moon is very much the Reds’ next target. Moscow has laid its plans, and will surely make an effort to carry them out.

At first it will be an unmanned rocket; in fact, several of them. Later the Soviet rockets to the moon will be manned. Finally, Soviet men will stay on the moon, either for definite periods of time or permanently. Such is the Kremlin’s announced agenda.

The Russians say they will build special lunar cities with unique atmospheric pressures so arranged as to enable humans to survive and thrive on the moon. We have this on the authority of Prof. N. A. Varvarov, chairman of the Astronautics Section of DOSAAF, the initials standing for the Russian name of the Volunteer Organization of Aiding the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy of the Soviet Union, the civil-defense apparatus of that country.

It will be, the Russian professor points out, a pressure one-third less than now present on the earth at sea level, but it will contain more oxygen than we now have at sea level, and so the earth’s man when transported to the moon will be “able to breathe without any unpleasantness for his health.”

The Red city will be constructed in one of the lunar craters, under a tremendous dome of glass and furnished with aluminum doors which Prof. Varvarov calls “air-locks.” Inside, at every half-mile or so, the city will be partitioned by glass walls with double doors. These will minimize the damage that may result from falling meteorites or other accidents. The walls will play a role similar to that now served by an ocean-liner’s water-tight compartments.

“We will find it expensive to transport food from the earth to the moon,” declares Varvarov. “A loaf of bread on being carried to the moon will be worth its weight in gold. Therefore our future lunar settlements will have to be self-sufficient insofar as food is concerned.”

Because of the difference in gravity, all plants will grow fantastically big when transplanted to the moon: “A radish will be as tall as a date palm grows on earth. Onions will send forth sprouts 33 feet long.”

A number of solar- and atomic-energy stations will be built on the moon by the Soviet man of the future. With the aid of these, the moon’s light, water, and other necessities will be provided. Aluminum, glass, plastics, oxygen, and nitrogen will all come from lunar ores.

Soviet men, exploring the moon, exploiting its natural resources, and building those lunar cities, are shown in the recently completed Moscow film, Road Into Interstellar Space. This movie was produced with the help of a large group of Soviet scientists specializing in astrophysics and astronautics. Prof. Varvarov must have been among these advisers.

The main industry of the future Red lunar settlements, as envisaged by Varvarov in his writings, will be the manufacture of spaceships and spaceship fuel. For after the moon, Mars and Venus will be the Soviet targets, with the moon serving as a way station and a ship-and-fuel depot en route to those planets.

It won’t be easy, Soviet periodicals warn their readers, but it can be done. How tremendous an undertaking even the sending of an unmanned rocket to the very first target—the moon—is, may be judged from the mere fact of the distance between the earth and the moon. So says the Moscow Pravda as it acquaints Russians with the following figures:

To cover the distance equal to that between the earth and the moon, a pedestrian would have to be in ceaseless motion for 8 years and 280 days; a bicyclist—1 year, 168 days, and 8 hours; an automobile—160 days; an express electrical train—53 days and 8 hours; and a late-model airplane— 20 days.

Sputnik I has covered a similar distance in 13 hours and 43 minutes. A Soviet rocket to the moon, at some 25,000 miles per hour, can reach its destination in less than 10 hours.

Even if a Red rocket cannot reach the moon for a while yet, it may be able to circle the moon and then return to any point of the Soviet part of our globe. This is the so-called Operation Boomerang, now being planned by Prof. G. Chebotarev of Moscow — a scheme of hurling a rocket to the moon and back, with a small initial fuel push to start it and no fuel expenditure en route.

Operation Boomerang appears to be quite plausible, in theory at least, to a number of Western scientists. It stems from the computations made by Prof. Chebotarev and his staff at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. This Russian professor declares:

“Up to now scientists have based their projects of interplanetary flights on the use of multi-stage rockets, which need a great supply of fuel for the flight’s entire duration. But all we really need is an initial push—to launch the rocket, to help it overcome the earth’s gravity. Then, through inertia and the law of universal gravitation, the rocket will fly along a certain trajectory, circle the moon, and return to us.”

The initial push in launching this rocket will take only 16 tons of fuel, insists the Red scientist. He describes his rocket thusly: Shaped like an elongated ellipse, the rocket will contain a radio transmitter and movie-and-photo cameras, giving the Soviets valuable data of the lunar surface from a closer distance than ever before, and, most importantly, of that part of the moon (41 percent of it) which presently we cannot see.

The rocket will come back like a boomerang, says Prof. Chebotarev; or, yet more correctly, “like a stone thrown upward.” Its speed will diminish “as in the stone when it as^ cends, until its speed is zero.” Dropping back to earth, the rocket will resume its former speed. To save the rocket from smashing on return, it will be equipped*with an automatic parachute set to open at a certain height on its way back to earth.

Following Operation Boomerang, or launched simultaneously, there may be a Soviet rocket aimed to hit the moon rather than circle it. This may have a hydrogen warhead, meant to explode on striking the moon on a night when the latter is not visible to us. The explosion would then produce for us illumination stronger than ordinary moonlight even at the moon’s fullest. If achieved, this would be eloquent propagandistic proof of Soviet political and technological power, indeed. Of a more peaceful yet most practical value could be Red rockets landing on the moon with no explosions, but with instruments that would broadcast back to the Soviets important scientific data on the state of the moon’s affairs.

In the Moscow press these days, Yuri S. Khlebtsevich declares that such rockets would send back to Rusian scientists plentiful radio and television reports from the moon. He maintains that such a landing and such consequent broadcasts may be organized by the Soviets not later than the beginning of the next decade —in the early 1960’s.

Khlebtsevich, who is chairman of the Soviet Technical Committee on Radio-Television Guidance of Rockets, describes such an unmanned rocket to the moon as “a tankette-laboratory,” which can be launched with no more than 250 tons of fuel. That it can reach the moon, he has no doubts. “Moving upon the moon’s surface,” explains Khlebtsevich, “the tankette will incessantly take films, relaying them to us as television.” It will probe the moon’s ground, register its temperature, and measure all sorts of phenomena out there.

The future flight, landing, and functioning of this “tankette-laboratory” were graphically and effectively shown in the special Disney-like film recently released by the Soviets both at home and abroad. After these unmanned rockets will come manned ones.

Manned rockets, which are predicted by Khlebtsevich for 1965 or 1970, will improve rapidly—until by the end of the present century (he insists) “flights from the earth to the moon and back will be common.” — The next phase will be the building of those lunar cities described by Prof. Varvarov. And so on and on, until — fifty years from now — the moon according to Khlebtsevich will be “our planet’s seventh continent, so to say.”

Youngish, energetic, not yet a doctor of science and holding only the degree of candidate of science (somewhat above our degree of master of science), Yuri Khlebtsevich is widely known in Russia as the author of the so-called L-V-M timetable. This is the Lunar-Venus-Martian schedule of flight, showing exactly or approximately when, by what year if not month, the Russians will reach first the moon, then Venus, and finally Mars. (Occasionally, Khlebtsevich names Mars ahead of Venus.) - Whatever planet is thus mastered, by manned rockets or not, Soviet propaganda will be materially helped, implies Khlebtsevich: the rockets will receive Moscow television programs, will step up their power, and will rebroadcast them back to the earth, to be seen and heard “by the people of half the globe!”

But will the Soviets have a legal title to the moon, and later to other heavenly bodies — if they are the first to reach those outer worlds?

Landing alone is not enough, maintains Dr. Norman MacKenzie, president of the University of British Columbia, one of Canada’s leading experts in international law. “Possession and control” constitute the only formula, he states, under which any nation on earth can claim anything above us.

But that is precisely Moscow’s plan: to possess and control anything the Reds reach in outer space. That is why they intend, as soon as they are able, to have human beings in those Soviet interplanetary rockets, and to establish permanent man-staffed Russian stations on the moon and further yet.

Khlebtsevich professes to be disturbed by the fears recently expressed by some Americans that the Russians would appropriate and fortify the moon once their manned rockets reach it.

He reassures us: “The aim of the Soviet scientists is not at all to build military bases on the moon so as to threaten the United States from there. Our efforts in astronautics are to penetrate the secrets of cosmic space the soonest, to comprehend the measureless universe the deepest.”

He is echoed by Prof. Anatoly Blagonravov, head of the Technical Sciences Division of the Soviet Acad-emy of Sciences. This Red professor, who visited the United States last fall and happened to be attending a scientific conference in Washington when the news of Sputnik I astounded the world, also tries to dismiss such American misgivings.

He writes that such fears are “an absurdity to any sober-thinking military expert in any country” who surely knows that “the hoisting of any national flag on the moon should not be the basic goal” of any astronauts, be they Soviet or American. A piquant fact, little advertised by Moscow, is that “Pacifist” Blagonravov is not only a professor but also a lieutenant-general in Soviet artillery, president of the Soviet Academy of Artillery Sciences, and author of a score of treatises on aviation arms.

Both Khlebtsevich and Blagonravov protest that the future Soviet take-over of the moon—and possibly also of Mars and Venus—will in no wise serve purposes of war. “Bombing of any given point on the earth is always simpler and can be made more exact when done from the earth itself than from the moon and even more so than from Mars and Venus,” argues Khlebtsevich, and agrees Blagonravov.

As if to guarantee this neutralization of the distant planets, both Khlebtsevich and ^Blagonravov suggest that America join Russia in all such peaceful rocket-researches and rocket-building, with both our brains and our dollars. A most idyllic picture is painted by the Moscow scientists as the inevitable result of this American-Russian pooling of resources.

The thrifty among us may be tempted by Khlebtsevich’s claim that Soviet blueprints of these non-military rockets “will be far less expensive than American projects” of such flights.

No time like the present, urges Blagonravov: “We would be happy to establish a steady, firm contact with the scientists of the United States working in astronautics, also with American interplanetary-rocket associations.”

And, if we may be a wee bit cynical, why not? From the Soviet viewpoint, that is—why not? In all such contacts amid our contests the Soviets would always learn more from our scientists than the Soviets would in their turn impart.

At least, they would try to take as much as they could but give little, if anything at all.

There is a very interesting book about mainly Ottoman and some European, Chinese Torments written and drawn by very famous cartoonist (caricaturist) Bahadir Boysal in Turkey. He portraits in this Turkish book with his own extremist style what is behind the usual history. I show one page from this book. What here on the image written in Turkish doesn't much differ from Wikipedia version.

The Kazakh legend mentioned in the novel is about a cruel way of making a mankurt, a man that forgets everything but basic activities and thus becomes an ideal slave. A fresh raw camel hide would be put as a cap on the thoroughly shaven head of a captive. The slave with his hands tied and with a large wooden stock around his neck preventing him from reaching his head would be left in desert for several days. Once the hide would start drying it would shrink and bind to the head, thus making a hoop and "squeezing" all sanity out of the man. What is worse, the hair is not always able to grow through the camel's hide so it often curls back and the strong Asian hair would penetrates the scalp again causing a pain beyond endurance. Removing completely the camel's hide from the scalp is not always possible and those mankurts (e.g. the son of Nayman-Ana in Aytmatov's novel) are so ashamed of having such a headgear that they are always wearing a cap, day and night and would not doff it for anything in the world.

If the man happens to survive the torture, he would be recuperated and become like a dog to his master, not remembering anything from his past, even his own name nor his own mother.

This legend and the story around it are of central symbolic nature in Aitmatov's novel.

Today the word mankurt is often used by many nationals of republics of the former Soviet Union of Turkic kinship (Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tatarstan, Kazakhstan, etc.), with respect to their fellow citizens who don't care enough about the native language and native culture; e.g., speak only Russian. It is also used in Turkey in reference to the wholesale adoption of Western approaches to world politics and the zeal for entry into the EU manifested by sections of the educated elite.

Here is my translation of this drawing.

Bachibouzouk : Ottomans, in European invasions, in front of the army put mad people whom they have picked up from different places of empire in the beginning of war. The opposite army became in a shock that they couldn't manage to gather strength when they had seen such horde of crazy attacking ,shouting army in their strange, kitsch costumes mostly nude. Our Anatolia is very colorful, it has many crazy people. This crazy horde such affected Europe that even this Turkish word passed to European languages and literature without a change.

now my poor comments : yeah, bashibouzuk means in turkish exactly 'crazy head', 'the head gone mad'. ok what we have in english from turkish: kebab, yoghurt, baklava, doner etc and bashibouzuk. is there a relation between good food taste and craziness? anyway let's eat sweet let's talk sweet in turkish we say as an idiom. come on, take us to the european union, result of this article that i personally promise that i will not get on the horses and attack anywhere. i am calm. pleaseeeee

p.s here is wiki's bashibozuks. they don't look like terrible and crazy at all. i prefer bahadir boysal's caricatures.

Jack London, describing one sort of alcoholic in the autobiographical John Barleycorn, writes that he "is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants. He is the type that gives rise to the jokes in the funny papers."